


A Hero's Guide

by corviknightly



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, How Do I Tag, Legend is a softy, heroes... passing on the torch, the rest of the gang is there too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23792164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corviknightly/pseuds/corviknightly
Summary: To whom it may concern,If you are reading this book, congratulations! You’ve stumbled across a literal goldmine of practical knowledge, survival tips, and everything that you could possibly need to survive in the monster-infested world that we call our home!(Or you nicked this off my corpse before I could finish it, either way. That would deserve congratulations as well-- thanks for finally getting rid of me.)Or: Hyrule finds a book.
Relationships: Hyrule & Legend (Linked Universe)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 268





	1. Chapter 1

Before Link was the Hero of Hyrule and just a boy on a quest to help his home, he found a book buried in the sand near the beach.

It was old, twice his age and then some more, some of the pages were crinkled from the salt water, and there was sand in the binding. It didn’t seem like any book he’d ever encountered, the ones that remained were always kept in glass cases far, far away from any water. It smelled like salt and sun and there was a stain on the cover that looked like blood, which really made Link start to wonder about who in the world would treat a book so poorly.

Of course, there was only one way he’d find out, and though he’d probably be yelled at for it when he showed the book to the people at the castle he gingerly lifted the weathered cover and began to read. 

_To whom it may concern,_

_If you are reading this book, congratulations! You’ve stumbled across a literal goldmine of practical knowledge, survival tips, and everything that you could possibly need to survive in the monster-infested world that we call our home!_

_(Or you nicked this off my corpse before I could finish it, either way. That would deserve congratulations as well-- thanks for finally getting rid of me.)_

_I wish I had someone special to dedicate this to, so I’ll leave a spot blank and fill it in later when I meet them._

On the line below it, the author seems to have returned in a different ink color, a red that has faded into a sort of light pink from the water that had at some point covered the bottom of the page. 

_This book is for the people we adventurers must leave behind. Keep their names in your heart and their words in your mind as you stride forward and they will never truly be gone._

The name signed at the bottom of the page has been lost to the waves, but the pattern of notes that the author drew are still legible. He balanced the book on his bag and tried to play the tune on his recorder, and the song sounded like sorrow. 

Link turned the page, eager to read more from this mystery author, almost tearing the delicate material in the process.

The next fifteen or so pages are all a part of the “ _Hero’s Guide to Monsters,_ ” a well-crafted guide with all the monsters Link has ever seen and then some. He’s very particular about the classification of each monster, rating them from one to five depending on how dangerous they are.

On the very last page of the monster guide, there’s a strange being, similar to a well-decorated whale with tiny wings on its back.

Link found it cute until he saw its rating.

_A Hero’s Guide to Monsters._

_The Wind Fish. Danger rating - 6 (A god.)_

_If you find yourself on its island, do not engage it. Do not try to leave, do not try to fight it, and for Nayru’s sake,_ **_don’t wake it._ **

Link shuddered. If a seasoned adventurer like the author feared this being, he prayed he would never have to encounter it.

He read through all of the adventurer’s writings over and over, from the section on simple meals to cook in the wilderness to the section on how to heal, both physically and emotionally, when red potions and fairies alone wouldn’t cut it. Even things like navigation and common traps had their own pages, and on his later journey he found himself getting lost much less often (though it still happened plenty). 

The last page was a letter from the author that had been ripped in half, leaving Link with only the first few lines. 

_To whom it may concern._

_Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of this book. I would hope that you learned something from this, and if you haven’t then I don’t know what to say to you. Your prize is a vague feeling of superiority over me, good job, you get a gold star._

_I began this book years ago, after my very first quest to save Hyrule. Since then, I’ve saved several other realms in my travels, and I’ve been able to write so much that I’ve run out of space. At the moment I’m on my sixth quest, with eight other adventurers. They call me Le----_

The rest of the page is lost. Link has hundreds of questions he wants to ask this author, this ‘Le,’ who feels like a friend he hasn’t even met. There are times when he thinks through what he would say to him, in some dream world where they’re able to meet. He wants to ask about him as a person, about how exactly those magic rings he wrote about worked, but most importantly he wants to thank the hero-- and he is certain that the author was one-- for saving his life on so many occasions. 

He kept the book in his bag even when he finished his second journey, and he kept it in his bag when a portal sucked him in and dragged him to a faraway Hyrule to quest with alternate versions of himself. 

He wasn’t Link anymore, since they all were. He was known as Traveler, and the others were Old Man, Ranchhand, Captain, Cook, Smithy, Sky, Sailor, and Veteran. They were a chaotic group of heroes who clashed often because everyone’s personalities were just so _loud_. 

For someone whose tale was a play set in silence, it was a nice change of pace. 

Yet the thoughts of ‘Le’ still lingered on the edge of his mind. He had no doubt that Le was a hero, but which one? All of them were smart, strong, and capable, and he could reasonably see Le being any one of them. The Old Man’s wisdom, The Cook’s way with food and navigation, Captain’s leadership, and Vet’s experience and subtle snark all made them perfectly fine candidates to be the author.

Link pondered that question as they wandered, jumping from world to world on a wild quest to save them all. 

And he continued to ponder that until one fateful evening, sitting around a campfire.

Veteran was writing something, while the Smithy had his face buried in a book. Sky was lightly strumming an old tune on a harp, and the Sailor had pulled out a tiny needle and thread and was repairing the Captain’s scarf for him. All was quiet and peaceful until the Cook broke the silence.

  
“This is a little out of left field, but what are your hero names- er, hero titles? My Zelda told me a lot about the heroes that came before me, and I’d like to see if the myths about you guys are true.” 

There was a tense moment as they all exchanged glances. Many of the heroes weren’t comfortable talking about their journeys other than brief details, and Link wasn’t sure if any of them were going to answer that question.

Sky was the first one to speak. “If it wasn’t obvious, I’m the Hero of the Skies!”

That seemed to break the tension, and soon everyone was giving out their titles. Link learned that the Smithy had two-- Hero of the Minish and of the Four Sword-- and that the Old Man was capable of time travel, somehow. 

The Veteran introduced himself as “The Hero of Legend” which got a laugh out of half the group.

“Hah, you got stuck with the worst title!” The Hero of Warriors laughed, “We _all_ got called the Hero of Legend, did you just never get a cooler title?”

The Hero of Legend fixed him with a glare. “Did you really forget I’ve gone on five times the journeys you have? So what, you have a fancier title, what do you get out of it? A vague feeling of superiority? Good job, you get a gold star.” 

In any other situation, Link would’ve frowned at the veteran hero for being rude, but his words made a connection.

_“They call me Le----”_

_“...a vague feeling of superiority. Good job, you get a gold star.”_

Like the pieces of a puzzle, clicking into place, Link comes to a realization.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything made sense.

“You’re the author!” He gasped out loud, leaping out of his seat and turning to the Veteran with a wide grin. 

“I’m-- I’m the what?” The pink-haired hero looked confused. He turned to the Captain for some sort of possible explanation, but the rest of the group looked just as confused as him.   
  


Link stopped, suddenly doubting his conclusion. Did he have the wrong hero? Or had the Veteran he knew just not written the book yet? 

If there was one thing he had learned from hanging around the princesses in the royal court, it was to not ask questions if he was wrong on the first go. No, Link had learned the hard way that staying silent and keeping any further questions to himself was better than making himself a laughingstock among all the snooty nobles who he hated to hang around with anyways. 

But, these people weren’t snooty nobles who only pretended to like him because he was the hero. No, he’d watched the Cook break his shield trying to slide down a mountain and he’d watched the Smith break his nose walking straight into a tree. These were heroes and kids, just like him, covered in scars and grass stains and dirt. He’d be okay if he embarrassed himself, just once.

“Have you, er, ever written a book? Or do you ever plan to? Because I found one on my first journey and you sound exactly like the author, and--” He froze, feeling like an idiot. “I’ve got the book in my bag right here, let me just show it to you.”   
  


He searched for a moment, too preoccupied to see the realization dawning on his companion’s face. When he retrieved the battered book, the veteran hero’s face was one of shock.

“That’s the guide I’ve been working on! Hylia, what did you do to it? Y’need to be more careful with your stuff.” The Veteran reached out, gingerly taking the book from Link’s hands and lightly flipping the pages.

“I found it like that!” He crossed his arms, offended that he’d think that. “It may look bad but I can still read all the pages except the last one, and I made sure I took good care of it since it helped me a lot on my journey.”

The Veteran gave him a genuine smile, handing him the book back before he read the final three pages. “I haven’t finished it yet, I don’t want to spoil my own writing for myself.”

The Ranchhand smiled fondly at them. “Looks like I wasn’t the only one who had help from a previous hero on my journey.”

Then the Sailor was on his feet, grabby little hands reaching towards the book. “Let us read it! I want to see what kind of stuff is in there!”   
  


“I’d like to see it as well,” said the Cook, a grin on his face that said ‘If you don’t hand it over willingly I’ll steal it from you’.

Though the Veteran protested plenty, when the Captain snatched his unfinished copy from his bag and began to read aloud, he gave in. 

It went surprisingly well, actually. No books-- or heroes-- were tossed into the campfire, and the other experienced heroes offered their own survival tips to help out. The Cook offered edits to the recipes, The Sailor offered tips for navigation, and soon enough each of the Links had added some form of adjustment to The Veteran’s writing. Link hadn’t realized because he hadn’t read the unfinished copy until then, but the original writing was slightly different, and the copy he had was the one that had been edited by all the other heroes. 

It really was the Hero’s Guide.

After that night, they continued to travel, a little less like friends and a little more like siblings. Days bled into weeks which bled into months, and Link-- who’d been re-nicknamed from Traveller to Hyrule when all the vague descriptions felt too impersonal-- learned more and more about everyone. They also learned more about their enemy, Dark Link, and just what dark force had brought them all together from different times in the first place.

It seemed like he felt out of place less and less, and though there were still moments of insecurity he felt more at home with his friends than he did within the walls of the castle. 

Then, weeks after their first conversation, Legend called out to him as they all sat around the campsite. “Hey, ‘Rule? Can you come over here for a second?”

“Oh, sure!” He stood up, crossing over to the tree that Legend was leaning against. “What is it?”

“Have you got my book on you?” Hyrule nodded, wordlessly handing him the battered book. Legend opened it and flipped to the final page, where he examined the tear in the paper. 

Next, he took out his own copy and flipped it to the same page. After several seconds of comparing each page, he did something that Hyrule hadn’t been expecting in the slightest. 

Carefully, he tore his own page, right along the line of the tear in Hyrule’s book. 

Hyrule gasped in horror, trying to wrap his mind around why exactly Legend was ruining his own book and making him watch. 

Once it was cut out, he held out the bottom half of the page. “Keep it. You deserve to be able to read the whole book. I just finished it today, I hope it’s a satisfying conclusion.”   
  


Hyrule gasped, lining the two halves of the page up. They were a perfect match, though the bottom half was pristine and hadn’t been weathered away by salt and sun and air.

“Just- don’t read it while I’m nearby, it’s sort of embarrassing.” Legend added, looking away awkwardly. Hyrule laughed out loud at that. Zelda did the exact same thing when she wanted to share the poem’s she’d written with him. It must have been an author thing. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” he stood up, dusting the grass off his tunic with one hand, then practically dashed across the campsite to read what was on the page.

With the book and the cut page lined up, he began to read. 

_ To whom it may concern.  _

_ Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of this book. I would hope that you learned something from this, and if you haven’t then I don’t know what to say to you. Your prize is a vague feeling of superiority over me, good job, you get a gold star. _

_ I began this book years ago, after my very first quest to save Hyrule. Since then, I’ve saved-- and doomed-- several other realms in my travels, and I’ve been able to write so much that I’ve run out of space. At the moment I’m on my sixth quest, with eight other adventurers. They call me Legend, because we all share the same name. It’s a lot of time travel and bullshit, but each and every party member is a hero who saved Hyrule, and we’re all on an epic quest to save all versions of Hyrule.  _

_ Each one of us is so different that it’s weird thinking about how we’re technically the same person. War is insufferable, Wind is a literal child, and Time is  _ **_married_ ** _ , which is probably the weirdest thing. But we all hold the spirit of the hero and the courage to save our homes, so I can’t truly hate them.  _

_ But I’m getting off topic, my fellow traveler, congratulations on seeing this book through to the very end. Remember to watch your back, shoot the eye, don’t eat suspicious fruits, and have faith in yourself. You don’t need a title or a prophecy to save people, just a sword and your own wits. _

_ And maybe a little help from a friend or two along the way. _

_ Thank you to Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, and Link, for helping me write, and thank you to Link, for actually following my advice and becoming a truly amazing hero. _

_ Signed,  _

_ Link, Hero of Legend.  _

After their journey was done and they’d returned to their own Hyrules, Hyrule found himself rereading the final page over and over again. Though he would not see his comrades again, he could never truly forget about them.

And, a decade later, he found himself writing his own Hero’s Handbook to leave behind for another boy or girl on a quest to save their home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whew!!!! i hope you enjoyed the final chapter of A Hero's Guide, because i sure enjoyed writing it! this entire fic was done in the span of two (two!!!) days, which honestly is the fastest i've ever written anything.   
> thank you so much to all the lovely people who commented, i really loved reading each and every one of them and,,, you guys are all so kind, i love y'all and this fandom so much,,

**Author's Note:**

> :cry: hello,,, i never thought i'd post one of my LU fics, but here we are? i thought up this concept at exactly 4:20 AM this morning and i decided i simply had to write it for my buddy high-rule. i hope you enjoyed reading it! let me know what you think,, if you want,, i thrive off of comments and stuff
> 
> chapter 2 is on the way!


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